Olympics pay tribute to first hot air balloon flight, industry events call for preserving space artifacts
By Michael Mackowski|December 2024
The History Committee works to preserve the record of aerospace advances and recognize their impacts on modern society.
The Paris Olympics put on the year’s most spectacular tribute to aviation history. Each night, starting with the July opening ceremony, a hot air balloon rose into the skies, hoisting a 7-meter-diameter cauldron, in a tribute to the Montgolfier brothers’ 1783 balloon flight. The display allowed millions in Paris and around the world to hear the story of the first lighter-than-air flight by humans.
It was also an eventful year for anniversaries. Among them: April marked 100 years since the establishment of the Royal Canadian Air Force, and September marked the 100th anniversary of the first aerial circumnavigation, a six-month flight completed by U.S. pilots in four Douglas Air Cruisers.
A number of events were held on the history of space exploration and the preservation of artifacts. In January, the NASA History Office, with the National Academies and the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, hosted a multiday symposium in Washington, D.C., about NASA’s Discovery and New Frontiers programs. Panelists discussed the history of the programs, “their successes and failures, and their impact on knowledge and the practice of planetary science,” according to the event webpage.
In March, Women in Aviation International held its annual Pioneer Hall of Fame ceremony. Among the inductees was Katherine Johnson, the pioneering mathematician whose orbital mechanics calculations for the Apollo moon landings were made famous by the book and movie “Hidden Figures.”
In April, AIAA and a group of the Society for the History of Technology cosponsored an online lecture by Margaret Weitekamp, this year’s recipient of AIAA’s Gardner-Lasser Aerospace History Literature Award. Her book, “Space Craze: America’s Enduring Fascination with Real and Imagined Spaceflight” drew on the Air and Space Museum’s extensive memorabilia collection to provide new insights into U.S. space history.
To mark the 55th anniversary of Apollo 11, AIAA and the Air and Space Museum in June hosted the Outer Space Heritage Summit at the Udvar-Hazy Center outside Washington, D.C. Discussions included how to document and preserve historically significant human and robotic landing sites, artifacts, spacecraft and other evidence of activity on celestial bodies. In August, the National Park Service held a multiday symposium in Houston, “Preserving the Race for Space 2024: From the Earth to the Moon and Beyond,” centered on the preservation of space exploration facilities and artifacts. The park service’s National Center for Preservation Technology and Training hosted the event, partnering with AIAA, Space Center Houston, Cane River National Heritage Area and NASA.
The year’s new exhibitions included “Home Beyond Earth” at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, which opened in June. The space-station-focused exhibition featured some 50 artifacts and invited visitors to create their ideal life on a space station via digital projections and other interactive elements. From June to September, the New York Hall of Science in collaboration with NASA, the Air and Space Museum, Boeing and Evergreen Exhibitions, hosted “Above and Beyond: The Ultimate Flight Exhibition,” focusing on innovation and opportunities for careers as engineers, pilots or astronauts. In September, the MIT Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, opened the American premiere of “Cosmograph: Speculative Fictions for the New Space Age,” an exhibition by Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy.
The NASA History Office issued new books on aviation and space history. Among them was “A Wartime Necessity: The National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) and Other National Aeronautical Research Organizations’ Efforts at Innovation During World War II,” edited by Alex Spencer. The book describes how World War II represented a turning point for government-industry cooperation and the role of applied research and development. This and other books are available as free downloads on https://www.nasa.gov/history/.
Contributors: Matt Bille, Kevin Burns, Jonathan Coopersmith and Deborah Douglas
